Tampon Inspection Unit – Automation and Image Processing Application in an Industrial Production Process

Abstract

Customers expect defect-free goods from the manufacturer. Both visible and invisible defects can result in expensive complaints, even if the function of the product is not affected. In many production processes, however, visual inspection is the only step that is still performed manually, which is very time-consuming and often only carried out on a spot check basis. In most cases it would be far more profitable to use machine vision to perform this task automatically. This paper describes a unique tampon inspection system for inline quality control based on image processing. In addition to detailed information about the hardware and software components, the paper also gives an outlook on future optimisation steps.